So I'll open up with the fact that I've had a long one and might be just a little out of my head.
One of the first things I discovered this morning is that our president has won the Nobel Peace prize. I must admit this confuses the hell out of me. I'm not trying to get into politics on a pop blog, but a far as I can tell, they're giving him the Nobel peace prize because of all the good they think he's going to do. My research has been less than exhaustive, I admit, but really... the Nobel Prize? He won it on hope, which I admit, is kind of his thing. He's got that hope market pretty solid.
So I've been thinking about this all day and trying to think how to tie it into pop culture so this can be a little relevant for this blog. Then I stumbled on this. Archie is going into 2009 b, and without the requisite 1.21 jigawatts. They're giving him a do-over, apparently because the shocking revelation that he was going to marry Veronica was just unacceptable to the world. That is an entirely different rant.
Before this goes any farther, in an effort to comply with the new ftc regulations coming down the pipeline, Jughead did give me a burger to slander Archie... that ginger bastard.
Back to the rant. What Archie and Obama have in common is a new trend in America. We are coming to a point where hope is all we are asking for, and that's kind of a bummer. The very thought that things might actually get better is all it takes for people to start whooping and punching the air and doing little dances. I've got nothing against doing these things for pretty much any reason... I just wish we had more than "Hey, maybe this will be ok" as a justification. Take what we can get, and if we can't may the lord bless us with a timeline b.
Also, we're bombing the moon.
So we do have that going for us.
Peace, love and biscuits
Friday, October 9, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Dear David Letterman
1. Someone relatively sleazy.
2. An identifiable victim.
3. A nosy-ass, disapproving third party.
A confusing example of a "sex scandal" that's come up recently, however, is one involving David Letterman, ugly talk show host extraordinaire and all around creepy old dude. Most disturbing about this entire situation is that it is now confirmed that more than one woman has had sex with him.
Even Letterman doesn't quite know how he pulled THAT off.
The part of this whole clusterfuck of gross that's most puzzling, however, is that anyone even cares. Over the years, Letterman hasn't exactly been a doll to work with, but he's no O' Reilly. And he's never been shy about being non-committal: Aside from a stalker or two and a marriage very late in life, his public sex life could be described as incredibly boring (at best). So the instant some dude threatened Letterman with blackmail, of course he copped to the situation. Yes, he had sex. From what's been released, it could be as many as a couple of times. And you know what I say? Good for him.
I personally know at least three guys under the age of thirty-five whose "numbers" stretch well into the the fifties and sixties. THIS is a controversy. It's surprising at this point that their dicks haven't rotted off, or at least been sprained several times. But Letterman? He's a pretty hideous looking funny guy. He makes no bones about the fact that sexually, he's not exactly super successful. But he's a human being, a long-time TV comedian, and a writer: Probably the only people he spends time around, EVER, are employees. I can't blame him for dipping into the only pool he has time for.
With all this in mind, I truly doubt any of the women he had sex with felt their jobs were on the line. Frankly he doesn't seem like he has the castanets to fire someone over a sexual rejection; he'd probably be more likely to promote them for their good sense. And admitting it on national TV is, in my book, the last proof of this: wherever those women are, hopefully they're laughing all the way to work. Which for many of them is probably still backstage at his show. If he thought he should feel guilty about all of this, he probably would have just resigned.
So NOW should just lay the hell off. Yes, he had sex with women in the workplace, which violates a rule that virtually 100% of men have attempted to break themselves (don't shit where you eat). Yes, his wife is probably mad at him for not being the most faithful of men, but it isn't like he's got some on the side now that he has a marriage and a son. It's almost as if those responsible for trumping up these situations are just bored. Leave the guy alone and get back to Pitt and Jolie. At least if one of them goes fuck-rogue, we'll have someone nice to look at on TV.
This is all assuming, of course, that the first person to come forward with an harassment suit ISN'T Paul Schaffer. That's when we'll have a fucking story.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Ill-Effects of Pop Culture
Yes, we love pop culture. It's everywhere now! Every news website has an Entertainment page and the aisles at every store have loads of entertainment/trash magazines lined up sky high. However, like every other great thing, there are some people who take it way too far.
Fanboy was once a term for the geeky type who holed themselves up in the basement and bitched/worshipped a movie, comic, tv show, etc. But somewhere along the line, being a huge fan of something became socially acceptable. If one wore a Star Wars shirt, you earned yourself a swirlee... You wore a Creed shirt, everyone laughed at you to the point that you actually considered throwing yourself off the highest building you could find (which you still should because that is 100% unacceptable)... If you talked about a video game anywhere, you'd have to try to explain that its improving your hand-eye coordination...
"blah blah blah hairy palms
blah blah blindness blah blah blah not in my bed..."
I present to you the worst of the worst things Pop Culture has given us.
Hot Topic
Oh. My. God. I cannot tell you how much I HATE Hot Topic. Once upon a time, I planned to have a different graphic shirt for each day of the week, so Hot Topic was the place to go... Until I realized that I don't have $25 FOR A FUCKING SHIRT EVER!!!
Beyond that, I hate HT for the fact that the best things in pop culture are brought here to die. Anything that was once slightly popular, Hot Topic will carry every piece of merchandise that is related to that subject. Things that makes sense, like the logo on a sticker or, if applicable, the action figure, or even a shirt with the main character on it. But when you get to the point that they have an shitty mix of Ed Hardy-esque shirts mixed with anything with the movie, or socks with holes in colors or a picture of Jimmy Carter flipping off a donkey in space and a dildo shaped boot with Robert Patrick's face on it... And that's a wrist band!
Prime Example: Look at what it did to Boondock Saints. Before only a select few saw this great movie... Then every goth/athetist had a shirt with a prayer on it and every frat guy had a flask with the "logo" on it.
Me Too! Cars
Once upon a time, if you had a Mustang, Camaro, GTO or any other muscle car, that meant one thing only...
You got the puss.
But somewhere along the lines, these fine pieces of American "Fuck the Roads" craftmenship was replaced with "Hey Dad, buy me that!" foreign piddly shit that has been "tricked out." Of course, the High Holy One of these rodents of the road is the Honda Civic.
Often called the ridiculously racist "Rice Burner" due to it's Asian decent, the "Me too!" car gets it's name from this far-too-common conversation:
Any Jock You Remember From High School: Hey man... What you got?
Some Dude With 14 Popped-Collared American Eagle Polo Shirts: A Red 2008 Honda Civic
Any Jock You Remember From High School: ME TOO!!
I present "The Douche"
And thus a friendship is born based on what Mommy and Daddy bought you so they could keep you out of the house and on the roads, endangering others.
It's bad enough we have to deal with these assholes on any popular stretch of road in any city, town, village, or backwater hoboville... but then Hollywood shoved Gone In 60 Seconds and The Fast and the Furious in our faces.
The only way that movie lives up to it's name is that I click over the station playing it (TBS, BET, etc...) really FAST and if someone says that they were good movies, I get FURIOUS and tear their brainless heads off their popped-collared bodies.
Prime Example: Go to any road refered to as the "Golden Mile" on any night of the week. See if you don't immediately regret that decision. And also try to figure out where they got the money to drive all night in a recession...
Cos Play
The "art" of dressing up like your favorite character from any media.
Pittsburgh Steelers fans
I understand being a fanboy... I have 7 lightsabers that I have mounted on the wall and I only take them down for 2 reasons:
1) To poke the cats while they are sleeping
2) To use during Halloween
I also have a pretty good Jedi costume that stays in my closet and I only take it out for 2 reasons:
1) Halloween, a Halloween party or the rare costume party not in October
2) NEVER BECAUSE IT'S A FUCKING HALLOWEEN COSTUME.
But there are people in this world who feel that they need to go to the mall in costumes (What!?!) or to a Comic Convention in scostume (Okay, a little bit more understandable) or just go to their buddies home (again... What!?!) or to dress up for the release of their favorite movie/video game/book...
This is unacceptable. You know why people laughed at the movie Role Models? Little kids shouting expletives and racist remarks is funny, and McLovin acting like a complete tool in his castle land outfit/mindset. Oh, and KISS...
So, attention girls in skimpy outfit and wings: Stop it...
Except you
Prime Example: I have gone to one comic convention, and there I saw a guy dressed up like Heath Ledger's joker (this was before The Dark Knight came out) and he was carrying a double-bladed Darth Maul Force FX lightsaber. Tell me where the connection is and I will gladly praise this man for his ingenius.
Topical Halloween Costumes
So I work for a newspaper. And in such newspaper, we ran an article last week about Top Halloween costumes for this year. Some of the costumes listed were a Sarah Palin mask and Kate Gosselin wig.
Pictured above: Tiny Fey.
Sarah Palin mask unavailable at deadline.
And it's not just this year. Last year was McCain and Obama. For the previous 8 years before that was George W. Bush. 8 years before that, the Clintons. Before that, OJ.
If you buy one of these costumes, you should just stop the payment method right now and send all your money to me.
Prime Example: So many horrible costumes to choose from, but I'd have to go with the Jon & Kate's Kate wig. She's a reality star, a bitch, a horrible mother and all the news sites had a big article about her NEW HAIR STYLE on The View... A topical costume EPIC FAIL!!
Twilight
If you like this movie or these books, you need to go to the library, ask for the classics, go to the aisle and pick any book. Go home, read it. Then take a lighter or matches and do what's right after you've experienced real literature.
Prime Example: It's sad to say, but Twilight fits into any of the above categories, so it's Prime Example is all of it and how horrible this phenomenon is. It has invaded all aspects of the pop world.
The only time I will feel a twinge of sadness for the "Me Too!" driver is when his girlfriend for that week makes him put a "Team Edward" sticker on the passenger side window.
Fanboy was once a term for the geeky type who holed themselves up in the basement and bitched/worshipped a movie, comic, tv show, etc. But somewhere along the line, being a huge fan of something became socially acceptable. If one wore a Star Wars shirt, you earned yourself a swirlee... You wore a Creed shirt, everyone laughed at you to the point that you actually considered throwing yourself off the highest building you could find (which you still should because that is 100% unacceptable)... If you talked about a video game anywhere, you'd have to try to explain that its improving your hand-eye coordination...
blah blah blindness blah blah blah not in my bed..."
I present to you the worst of the worst things Pop Culture has given us.
Hot Topic
Oh. My. God. I cannot tell you how much I HATE Hot Topic. Once upon a time, I planned to have a different graphic shirt for each day of the week, so Hot Topic was the place to go... Until I realized that I don't have $25 FOR A FUCKING SHIRT EVER!!!
Beyond that, I hate HT for the fact that the best things in pop culture are brought here to die. Anything that was once slightly popular, Hot Topic will carry every piece of merchandise that is related to that subject. Things that makes sense, like the logo on a sticker or, if applicable, the action figure, or even a shirt with the main character on it. But when you get to the point that they have an shitty mix of Ed Hardy-esque shirts mixed with anything with the movie, or socks with holes in colors or a picture of Jimmy Carter flipping off a donkey in space and a dildo shaped boot with Robert Patrick's face on it... And that's a wrist band!
Prime Example: Look at what it did to Boondock Saints. Before only a select few saw this great movie... Then every goth/athetist had a shirt with a prayer on it and every frat guy had a flask with the "logo" on it.
Me Too! Cars
Once upon a time, if you had a Mustang, Camaro, GTO or any other muscle car, that meant one thing only...
You got the puss.
But somewhere along the lines, these fine pieces of American "Fuck the Roads" craftmenship was replaced with "Hey Dad, buy me that!" foreign piddly shit that has been "tricked out." Of course, the High Holy One of these rodents of the road is the Honda Civic.
Often called the ridiculously racist "Rice Burner" due to it's Asian decent, the "Me too!" car gets it's name from this far-too-common conversation:
Any Jock You Remember From High School: Hey man... What you got?
Some Dude With 14 Popped-Collared American Eagle Polo Shirts: A Red 2008 Honda Civic
Any Jock You Remember From High School: ME TOO!!
And thus a friendship is born based on what Mommy and Daddy bought you so they could keep you out of the house and on the roads, endangering others.
It's bad enough we have to deal with these assholes on any popular stretch of road in any city, town, village, or backwater hoboville... but then Hollywood shoved Gone In 60 Seconds and The Fast and the Furious in our faces.
The only way that movie lives up to it's name is that I click over the station playing it (TBS, BET, etc...) really FAST and if someone says that they were good movies, I get FURIOUS and tear their brainless heads off their popped-collared bodies.
Prime Example: Go to any road refered to as the "Golden Mile" on any night of the week. See if you don't immediately regret that decision. And also try to figure out where they got the money to drive all night in a recession...
Cos Play
The "art" of dressing up like your favorite character from any media.
I understand being a fanboy... I have 7 lightsabers that I have mounted on the wall and I only take them down for 2 reasons:
1) To poke the cats while they are sleeping
2) To use during Halloween
I also have a pretty good Jedi costume that stays in my closet and I only take it out for 2 reasons:
1) Halloween, a Halloween party or the rare costume party not in October
2) NEVER BECAUSE IT'S A FUCKING HALLOWEEN COSTUME.
But there are people in this world who feel that they need to go to the mall in costumes (What!?!) or to a Comic Convention in scostume (Okay, a little bit more understandable) or just go to their buddies home (again... What!?!) or to dress up for the release of their favorite movie/video game/book...
This is unacceptable. You know why people laughed at the movie Role Models? Little kids shouting expletives and racist remarks is funny, and McLovin acting like a complete tool in his castle land outfit/mindset. Oh, and KISS...
So, attention girls in skimpy outfit and wings: Stop it...
Prime Example: I have gone to one comic convention, and there I saw a guy dressed up like Heath Ledger's joker (this was before The Dark Knight came out) and he was carrying a double-bladed Darth Maul Force FX lightsaber. Tell me where the connection is and I will gladly praise this man for his ingenius.
Topical Halloween Costumes
So I work for a newspaper. And in such newspaper, we ran an article last week about Top Halloween costumes for this year. Some of the costumes listed were a Sarah Palin mask and Kate Gosselin wig.
Sarah Palin mask unavailable at deadline.
And it's not just this year. Last year was McCain and Obama. For the previous 8 years before that was George W. Bush. 8 years before that, the Clintons. Before that, OJ.
If you buy one of these costumes, you should just stop the payment method right now and send all your money to me.
Prime Example: So many horrible costumes to choose from, but I'd have to go with the Jon & Kate's Kate wig. She's a reality star, a bitch, a horrible mother and all the news sites had a big article about her NEW HAIR STYLE on The View... A topical costume EPIC FAIL!!
Twilight
If you like this movie or these books, you need to go to the library, ask for the classics, go to the aisle and pick any book. Go home, read it. Then take a lighter or matches and do what's right after you've experienced real literature.
Prime Example: It's sad to say, but Twilight fits into any of the above categories, so it's Prime Example is all of it and how horrible this phenomenon is. It has invaded all aspects of the pop world.
The only time I will feel a twinge of sadness for the "Me Too!" driver is when his girlfriend for that week makes him put a "Team Edward" sticker on the passenger side window.
Monday, October 5, 2009
An introduction
So I was just invited here to post things. I've been given a fairly specific job. I'm here to bring you things from outside the pop. I feel I'm moderately qualified for this job.
*I live on a boat, or I'm a vagrant
*I have a perchance for wandering into strange strange things
*Every six months I scour the internet for the worst thing I can find as a baseline for humanity
So basically, what I'm going to do here is show you strange things you might not have wanted to know about. I'm going find strange news from around the world to either boost or destroy your faith in humanity. I'll probably rant from time to time about nothing overly important. For now though, I'll leave you with this to stimulate your thought.
probably not SUPER safe for work... just a heads up (It's youtube, so by definition isn't entirely unsafe. --C)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffDPTKn7HiY
*I live on a boat, or I'm a vagrant
*I have a perchance for wandering into strange strange things
*Every six months I scour the internet for the worst thing I can find as a baseline for humanity
So basically, what I'm going to do here is show you strange things you might not have wanted to know about. I'm going find strange news from around the world to either boost or destroy your faith in humanity. I'll probably rant from time to time about nothing overly important. For now though, I'll leave you with this to stimulate your thought.
probably not SUPER safe for work... just a heads up (It's youtube, so by definition isn't entirely unsafe. --C)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffDPTKn7HiY
s0. We're back.
They say that your average blog fails within the first year of starting up. (And if they don't, I just said it. Don't fight me on this.) But are we a statistic, having missed out on the last half of our first year?
Of course not! We track these statistics. We are statistic whores. So when we figured this one out, we put p0pcult into a state of deep hibernation, utterly skipping that fateful annual chance for failure. And now that we've gotten ourselves back into the game, it's time to loose Ripley on the ship and get those Alien bastards running for their lives.
That being said, we'll be adding a few new writers (at least that's the assumption.) I've invited an old friend, also, to bring you the weirdest sides of the world possible -- the Antip0p, if you will. He'll be posting shortly with possibly the oddest thing he could find. Start p0p off with a bang, right?
So welcome back. The cryogenic chambers are open and the cult is defrosting. We'll slap this bitch into the microwave and get it all heated up for you - grab the ketchup and be ready for a meal.
New(ish) cult, same old p0p.
And I am totally in.
Thanks to Gus for takin' the leap -- motivation comes from the best of us. Let's all get excited, people!
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